In a commercial printing industry in which printed matter (a catalog, an advertisement, etc.) is received from a customer, a printed output which the customer desires is generated from the printed matter, and the printed output is delivered to the customer to gain remuneration, multiple steps from receiving of the printed matter to delivering are followed to conduct operations. Steps from the receiving of the printed matter to the delivering include the customer submitting a manuscript for the printed matter, accepting of printing conditions of the printed output, color correcting, layout correcting, and stitch position correcting as pre-press operations; proof printing for the customer to confirm pre-press results; printing operations; and a post-process treatment such as compression bonding, printing stitching after printing, and delivering of the printed output to the customer. Increase/decrease occurs for the steps from the receiving of the printed matter to the delivering depending on the printing conditions of the printed output which the customer desires.
In the commercial printing industry, with many orders for printed matter being received from a customer to perform high-volume printing, the above-described steps are used to handle high-volume production of printed outputs. Moreover, a printing condition of the printed output from the customer is often fixed for the printed matter for performing the high-volume printing. Thus, in the commercial printing industry, a printed output which the customer desires is generated in a printing cycle in which the high-volume printing is performed with one determined printing condition and printing of a lot is completed, after which the printing condition is changed and the high-volume printing is performed again.
In such a printing cycle, the above-described multiple steps occur when the printing condition is changed. Therefore, when there is no change to the printing condition, a commercial printing vendor can perform consecutive printing within the same step, making it possible to perform an efficient high-volume printing operation.
Recently, in the commercial printing industry, a so-called POD (Printed On Demand) market is emerging in which a relatively small lot of printed matter is delivered to a customer in a short lead time. In the POD market, orders are often received from multiple customers. As a result, in the POD market, printing conditions of printed outputs and printed matter for which a manuscript is submitted to the commercial printing vendor are often diverse.
At the same time, in these years, digitization of the printed matter is in progress, so that control is conducted for generating the printed matter using a computer. For example, a technique called a workflow is emerging in which a manuscript for printed matter is submitted over a network as electronic data, and the above-described multiple steps are controlled, for example. For example, the above-described workflow also includes a workflow in which a printing operation with the above-described multiple steps is defined with a job ticket called a JDF (Job Definition Format) and the printing operation is controlled with a printing system.
With such changes in the printing environment, the commercial printing vendors have been promoting computerization of the printing system for generating the printed matter for which an order is received. On the other hand, it is becoming necessary for the commercial printing vendors to build a printing system which can handle diverse printing conditions of the printed output from the customer. Moreover, in order to generate diverse printed outputs as a desire of the customer, it is also becoming necessary to respond in system aspects such as introducing multiple printing apparatuses and device (peripheral) apparatuses and to respond in operation step aspects such as changing the-above described multiple steps in a relatively short cycle.
It is becoming necessary for the commercial printing vendor to respond in the above-described manner, but it is also becoming necessary to make a further operational efficiency improvement for generating profits. Simplifying operations is one measure which leads to improving the operational efficiency.
For example, in a pre-press operation is included an operation of inserting a tab sheet to generate printed matter. A printing apparatus which produces a printed output while inserting a tab sheet between pages is known in the related art. (See Patent document 1, for example).
In the related-art printing apparatus, multiple sets of five tab sheets as constituting elements, for example, with a tab position of which of the tab sheets being successively offset, are superposed to be placed in a sheet-supplying tray. In the related art printing apparatus, if only first three tab sheets are used in a printing job, the remaining two tab sheets, i.e., the fourth and fifth tab sheets, become no longer necessary and must be discharged. This is because it is necessary to first supply a first tab sheet of the one tab sheet set at the time of executing the next printing job, for example.
The related art printing apparatuses include an apparatus in which the tab sheet which became no longer necessary is discharged to a sheet-discharging tray which is different from a sheet-discharging tray to which a sheet on which a page within the printing job is printed is discharged, and an apparatus in which discharging is made to a different sheet-discharging tray for each kind of tab sheet. A process of setting the sheet-discharging tray of the tab sheet is also one example of simplifying the above-described operations. (See Patent document 1, for example.)